The Deficit

Tough Budget Talk Seems To Be Little More Than Talk

November 12, 1993

One of the big objections of lawmakers to President Clinton's budget was that it didn't cut the deficit enough. The rhetoric was such that if the average citizen didn't know better, he or she might have thought that nearly every representative and senator was ready to make the tough choices that only Clinton refused to make.

Rhetoric and reality, however, are often at odds, and the proof is never hard to find that lawmakers aren't as ready to act as they sometimes say they are. The most recent example comes from the Senate, where a filibuster led by a Republican, Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, succeeded in blocking legislation permitting an increase in grazing fees and some federal land management reforms. The fees are so low now that taxpayers are subsidizing ranchers' use of federal lands.

The administration can implement some of the changes despite the defeat, but given the strident resistance of Western senators, it's a legitimate question as to whether Clinton will have the stomach to do so. As for the filibuster, it demonstrates the difficulty of any congressional action that imposes an increased financial burden on any constituency.

And the filibuster was only the latest act in the Senate to stop grazing reform. An earlier effort was killed by Western Democratic senators. Both parties are guilty here.

The budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended in September was $255 billion. The national debt, already more than $4 trillion, is climbing relentlessly, driven ever upward by government's failure to live within its means. The inability of Congress to take even the simple step of raising federal grazing fees represents, in dollars and cents, just a tiny fraction of that problem. But that failure reflects a mind-set that is eating away at the nation's financial integrity.